Is there a way of exporting the parametric study results to a csv file or equivalent?
Assuming it is not a weldment, you could open the 3D model tab in your assembly and add a 2D sketch to any plane that can see the stroke/displacement between two projected lines from your components, adding a reference dimension to save that as a parameter you can use later:
Then, with a bit of iLogic you can change your parametric design parameters in a loop (to go through each configuration possible), and export to Excel the new reference parameter measurement for the stroke, for example:
GoExcel.CellValue("c:\temp\parameters.xls", "Sheet1", "A2") = d0
If your parameters to change are within a subcomponent of the assembly, you may have to access them through something like this:
Parameter("myComponent:1","myParameter") = 10
But otherwise it is pretty straightforward.
How would I go about looping through and printing each combination of dimension parameter values and design constraint (FEA max displacement in above table) results? Is there a way of retrieving these in iLogic?
I'm not sure where the data are stored maybe there is a way of reading through output files instead.
I'm not sure there's anything iLogic (or any other customization) can bring to the table because there's not much in the API to call when it comes to the analysis tools.
How would I go about looping through and printing each combination of dimension parameter values and design constraint (FEA max displacement in above table) results?
To loop through the configurations, you can get it to generate the model for each parametric value:
Once you've done that you can drag the slider(s) to see the model change. Right-click to get more options - like studying a particular configuration.
Running the analysis gives you three options:
These are defined in the help as:
- Exhaustive set of configurations Solves all combinations of the parameters.
- Smart set of configurations Solves the base configuration and each parameter change to the base, then interpolates the other results.
- Current configuration only Solves the current configuration as a single point simulation.
If you want to refine your analysis, you can set "Limits" on the outputs you are analysing.
This shows I'm within my goals:
And this shows I'm not:
But that still doesn't let you take all the parametric options and their results out to a table. You can run a report to show all the outputs - but I don't think that's what you're looking for.
The output you are looking for would be complicated to display (even if it existed). You'd probably have to create a new sheet in Excel for each study - and for the model in your screenshot, that would be 122 sheets (11 x 11 + 1)
You might be better off running the exhaustive analysis - setting some limits and checking which parameter combinations are worthy of further investigation. Promote those configuration(s) back to the model and export the parameter(s). While not the answer you asked for, it hopefully gets you closer to the goal more quickly - which I guess is what parametric analysis is for.
Hope this helps.
Thanks for your help. I did in the end just reduce the number of points investigated and manually entered them as shown above. If I were to code it I would do something like the following:
for i = 1:steps_d1
for j = 1:steps_d2
excel or csv cell (i+1,j+1) = displacement (i,j)
end
end
...etc
It seems like such a simple script; surely all that is required is an understanding of VB and a way of creating a matrix of displacements. I just don't know if there is a way of reading them through iLogic. If there were a way of creating macros I could try and create a macro to loop through solving each in a simple study rather than a parametric study, but I haven't found the right documentation to work this out.
In any case I think you are right, parametric studies in inventor work great as a tool for quickly determining the best design in industry, but you start to see why academics prefer other packages which are more fiddly however allow much greater access 'under the hood'. I'll probably save this project for another day, it seems to be quicker to record data points manually rather than trying to find a way of exporting them! Maybe one day I'll work it out.
